Tempered Glass

Tempered glass will not splinter

just as skin stretched over skeleton will not snap

when pulled taut,

just dip between this rib and that,

just shatter into gentle pieces.

Then take your hot showers:

bathe in the thick steam that paints the room in a sweet-smelling film,

lavender and honey.

Take your time with your legs, your toes, your underarms.

Paste your broken hair to the walls until the pieces crawl like vines to the ceiling,

and bloom into faces and elephants and poems,

and you can read them like tea leaves at the bottom of your mug.

Bathe until you’re raw and shimmering,

scrubbed clean of seven years of skin cells you don’t recognize,

until some ancient version of you slips down the drain;

some version of you who wondered how hot the water would have to be

for her glass case to burst with her inside it,

bloody and flaming.

Before you knew that tempered glass does not splinter,

but was made with you in mind,

to withstand the heat.